


North Star

by ryyves



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5226332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thalia Grace has lost and lost and lost, and as she watches Zoë's final breath become a constellation, she vows to become a child of the stars and lead the Hunters with the same fierceness she had used to protect her found family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	North Star

Thalia Grace had stood on the line between mortality and immortality for a long time. As a demigod, she no longer felt at home in her own skin, for her limbs remembered being branches, and her blood remembered the heavy flow of sap. She could feel her body dying around her. She would lay awake shivering the nights away in the cold marble alcove of Cabin One. In the mornings, she made her bed meticulously, shaking out her pillow and bedroll until all the dandruff scattered on the floor. She hugged herself those uneasy nights, and wished for a body that didn’t ache for semi-immortality.

Maybe this was why she still held a grudge against the Hunters of Artemis.

Thalia had lost and lost and lost. When she had felt her body separated from the pine tree, part of herself had broken off and stayed behind. She woke to her found family split apart, Luke gone, Annabeth left all alone. She had had Luke close enough to hold, for one heart-wrenching minute, but he was no longer the Luke she had known, the Luke she had loved as a brother and would do anything to protect. He was still her brother. She would still do anything to protect him. But a world for Annabeth to grow up in, when the life of a demigod already spelled death, mattered more.

She had lost Bianca di Angelo, too. All who remained were Grover and Percy, old friends, and Zoë Nightshade, the girl who loathed her for her distaste of the Hunters and how easily they stole girls from their lives for immortal maidenhood.

Except now Thalia’s own life had been taken from her and tied with the deathless pine. Zoë’s formal speech had become endearing, the only constant on the quest that didn’t remind Thalia of Annabeth’s life in the balance, of Luke’s betrayal, of the family she had lost and would never be able to piece back together, like so much broken glass, not without the cracks.

She had lost, and now she watched Zoë Nightshade’s final exhale turn into stars.

She hadn’t gotten to say goodbye while Zoë still breathed. She hadn’t gotten to say thank you.

Thalia cried angry tears, watching Zoë’s constellation shine into existence, tears at the unfairness of a world that took everything from her, her family and the family she could have had.

She accepted Artemis’ offer and blessing without a moment of hesitation, without a regret. She remembered Zoë, and in a moment, she knew. This was what it meant to feel whole.

Thalia was a child of the sky, and she turned herself into the North Star, the guiding light for her Hunters, taking a place in the sky beside Zoë, so that the former lieutenant could look down on her with pride. Thalia’s immortal body no longer waged war against itself, and she carried that pride like a beacon in her chest.

Zoë hadn’t said how much it hurt, to hold responsibility for the lives of two dozen girls who only faced painful deaths, to fit her jagged edges into a new broken-glass family, to hold her losses in her palms, to shoot straight and never weep. But Thalia would learn.


End file.
